WASHINGTON—Psychodynamic psychotherapy is effective for a wide range of mental health symptoms, including depression, anxiety, panic and stress-related physical ailments, and the benefits of the therapy grow after treatment has ended, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Psychodynamic therapy focuses on the psychological roots of emotional suffering. Its hallmarks are self-reflection and self-examination, and the use of the relationship between therapist and patient as a window into problematic relationship patterns in the patient’s life. Its goal is not only to alleviate the most obvious symptoms but to help people lead healthier lives.

“The American public has been told that only newer, symptom-focused treatments like cognitive behavior therapy or medication have scientific support,” said study author Jonathan Shedler, PhD, of the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine. “The actual scientific evidence shows that psychodynamic therapy is highly effective. The benefits are at least as large as those of other psychotherapies, and they last.”

To reach these conclusions, Shedler reviewed eight meta-analyses comprising 160 studies of psychodynamic therapy, plus nine meta-analyses of other psychological treatments and antidepressant medications. Shedler focused on effect size, which measures the amount of change produced by each treatment. An effect size of 0.80 is considered a large effect in psychological and medical research. One major meta-analysis of psychodynamic therapy included 1,431 patients with a range of mental health problems and found an effect size of 0.97 for overall symptom improvement (the therapy was typically once per week and lasted less than a year). The effect size increased by 50 percent, to 1.51, when patients were re-evaluated nine or more months after therapy ended. The effect size for the most widely used antidepressant medications is a more modest 0.31. The findings are published in the February issue of American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association.

The eight meta-analyses, representing the best available scientific evidence on psychodynamic therapy, all showed substantial treatment benefits, according to Shedler. Effect sizes were impressive even for personality disorders—deeply ingrained maladaptive traits that are notoriously difficult to treat, he said. “The consistent trend toward larger effect sizes at follow-up suggests that psychodynamic psychotherapy sets in motion psychological processes that lead to ongoing change, even after therapy has ended,” Shedler said. “In contrast, the benefits of other ‘empirically supported’ therapies tend to diminish over time for the most common conditions, like depression and generalized anxiety.”

“Pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies have a financial incentive to promote the view that mental suffering can be reduced to lists of symptoms, and that treatment means managing those symptoms and little else. For some specific psychiatric conditions, this makes sense,” he added. “But more often, emotional suffering is woven into the fabric of the person’s life and rooted in relationship patterns, inner contradictions and emotional blind spots. This is what psychodynamic therapy is designed to address.”

Shedler acknowledged that there are many more studies of other psychological treatments (other than psychodynamic), and that the developers of other therapies took the lead in recognizing the importance of rigorous scientific evaluation. “Accountability is crucial,” said Shedler. “But now that research is putting psychodynamic therapy to the test, we are not seeing evidence that the newer therapies are more effective.”

Shedler also noted that existing research does not adequately capture the benefits that psychodynamic therapy aims to achieve. “It is easy to measure change in acute symptoms, harder to measure deeper personality changes. But it can be done.”

The research also suggests that when other psychotherapies are effective, it may be because they include unacknowledged psychodynamic elements. “When you look past therapy ‘brand names’ and look at what the effective therapists are actuallydoing, it turns out they are doing what psychodynamic therapists have always done—facilitating self-exploration, examining emotional blind spots, understanding relationship patterns.” Four studies of therapy for depression used actual recordings of therapy sessions to study what therapists said and did that was effective or ineffective. The more the therapists acted like psychodynamic therapists, the better the outcome, Shedler said. “This was true regardless of the kind of therapy the therapists believed they were providing.”

Contact Jonathan Shedler, PhD, by e-mail or by phone at (303) 715-9099 and by cell at (970) 948-4576.

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world’s largest association of psychologists. APA’s membership includes more than 150,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting health, education and human welfare.

Quasi-experimental study on the effectiveness of psychoanalysis, long-term and short-term psychotherapy on psychiatric symptoms, work ability and functional capacity during a 5-year follow-up.

Source

Social Insurance Institution, Helsinki, Finland. paul.knekt@thl.fi

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Psychotherapy is apparently an insufficient treatment for some patients with mood or anxiety disorder. In this study the effectiveness of short-term and long-term psychotherapies was compared with that of psychoanalysis.

METHODS:

A total of 326 psychiatric outpatients with mood or anxiety disorder were randomly assigned to solution-focused therapy, short-term psychodynamic and long-term psychodynamic psychotherapies. Additionally, 41 patients suitable for psychoanalysis were included in the study. The patients were followed from the start of the treatment and assessed 9 times during a 5-year follow-up. The primary outcome measures on symptoms were the Beck Depression Inventory, the Hamilton Depression and Anxiety Rating Scales, and the Symptom Check List, anxiety scale. Primary work ability and functional capacity measures were the Work Ability Index, the Work-subscale of the Social Adjustment Scale, and the Perceived Psychological Functioning Scale.

RESULTS:

A reduction in psychiatric symptoms and improvement in work ability and functional capacity was noted in all treatment groups during the 5-year follow-up. The short-term therapies were more effective than psychoanalysis during the first year, whereas the long-term therapy was more effective after 3years of follow-up. Psychoanalysis was most effective at the 5-year follow-up, which also marked the end of the psychoanalysis.

CONCLUSIONS:

Psychotherapy gives faster benefits than psychoanalysis, but in the long run psychoanalysis seems to be more effective. Results from trials, among patients suitable for psychoanalysis and with longer follow-up, are needed before firm conclusions about the relative effectiveness of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders can be drawn.

Objectives

What is the long-term outcome of participants in clinical trials of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders and psychosis?

Are there significant differences in effectiveness and cost-effectiveness associated with receiving CBT in comparison with alternative treatments?

Are there significant differences in effectiveness associated with receiving different intensities of CBT?

How well can long-term outcome be predicted from data from the original clinical trials?

Design

An attempt was made to contact and interview all of the participants in eight randomised, controlled, clinical trials of CBT for anxiety disorders and two randomised, controlled, clinical trials of CBT for schizophrenia conducted between 1985 and 2001. Case note reviews of healthcare resources used in the 2 years prior to entering the trials and the 2 years prior to follow-up interview were undertaken.

Setting

The clinical trials were conducted in mixed rural and urban settings in five localities in central Scotland. Anxiety disorder trials were conducted mainly in primary care and included three with generalised anxiety disorder, four with panic disorder and one with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The psychosis studies (one on relapse prevention and one with chronic disorder) were conducted in secondary care.

Participants

An attempt was made to follow up all 1071 entrants to the 10 studies, of whom 125 were not available to be contacted. Of the 946 who were available, 489 agreed to participate (46% of original entrants, 52% of those available to contact).

Method

Follow-up interviews took place between 1999 and 2003, 2–14 years after the original treatment. Interviews for Trials 1–8 were conducted by a research psychologist blind to original treatment condition. Interviews for Trials 9 and 10 were conducted by community psychiatric nurses also blind to treatment condition. Case note reviews were completed following the interview.

Results

Anxiety disorder studies (Trials 1–8)

Over half of the participants (52%) had at least one diagnosis at long-term follow-up, with significant levels of co-morbidity and health status scores comparable to the lowest 10% of the general population. Few participants had none or only mild symptoms (18%) and a significant proportion (30%) had subthreshold symptoms of at least moderate severity. Only 36% reported receiving no interim treatment for anxiety over the follow-up period with 19% receiving almost constant treatment. Patients with PTSD did particularly poorly. There was a 40% real increase in healthcare costs over the two time periods, mainly due to an increase in prescribing. A close relationship was found between poor mental and physical health for those with a chronic anxiety disorder.

Treatment with CBT was associated with a better long-term outcome than non-CBT in terms of overall symptom severity but not with regard to diagnostic status. The positive effects of CBT found in the original trials were eroded over longer time periods. No evidence was found for an association between more intensive therapy and more enduring effects of CBT. Long-term outcome was found to be most strongly predicted by the complexity and severity of presenting problems at the time of referral, by completion of treatment irrespective of modality and by the amount of interim treatment during the follow-up period. The quality of the therapeutic alliance, measured in two of the studies, was not related to long-term outcome but was related to short-term outcome.

The cost-effectiveness analysis showed no advantages of CBT over non-CBT. For the participants as a whole, CBT was associated with slightly higher costs than non-CBT and slightly higher benefits. For participants who completed CBT, versus all other participants, CBT was associated with somewhat lower costs and slightly higher benefits. The costs of providing CBT in the original trials was only a very small proportion (6.4%) of the overall costs of healthcare for this population, which are high for both physical and mental health problems.

Psychosis studies (Trials 9 and 10)

Outcome was generally poor and only 10% achieved a 25% reduction in total PANSS scores from pretreatment to long-term follow-up. Nearly all participants (93%) reported almost constant treatment over the follow-up period at a significantly higher level than for the anxiety disorder patients. Treatment with CBT was associated with more favourable scores on the three PANSS subscales. However, there were no significant differences between CBT and non-CBT groups in the proportions achieving clinically significant change and very few psychosis patients maintained a 25% reduction in PANSS scores from post-treatment to long-term follow-up regardless of treatment modality.

Cost-effectiveness analysis showed no advantages of CBT over non-CBT. Healthcare costs fell over the two time periods mainly owing to a reduction in inpatient costs.

Conclusions

The implications for healthcare are:

Psychological therapy services need to recognise that anxiety disorders tend to follow a chronic course and that good outcomes with CBT over the short term are no guarantee of good outcomes over the longer term.

Clinicians who go beyond standard treatment protocols of about 10 sessions over a 6-month period are unlikely to bring about greater improvement.

Poor outcomes over the long term are related to greater complexity and severity of presenting problems at the time of referral, failure to complete treatment irrespective of modality and the amount of interim treatment during the follow-up period.

The relative gains of CBT are greater in anxiety disorders than in psychosis.

Recommendations for future research

Longitudinal research designs over extended periods of time (2–5 years), with large numbers of participants (500+), are required to investigate the relative importance of patient characteristics, therapeutic alliance and therapist expertise in determining the cost-effectiveness of CBT in the longer term.

A better understanding of the mechanisms by which poor treatment responders become increasingly disabled by multiple physical and mental disorders will require close collaboration between researchers in the clinical, biological and social sciences.

Publication

NHS R&D HTA Programme

The research findings from the NHS R&D Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme directly influence key decision-making bodies such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the National Screening Committee (NSC) who rely on HTA outputs to help raise standards of care. HTA findings also help to improve the quality of the service in the NHS indirectly in that they form a key component of the ‘National Knowledge Service’ that is being developed to improve the evidence of clinical practice throughout the NHS.

The HTA Programme was set up in 1993. Its role is to ensure that high-quality research information on the costs, effectiveness and broader impact of health technologies is produced in the most efficient way for those who use, manage and provide care in the NHS. ‘Health technologies’ are broadly defined to include all interventions used to promote health, prevent and treat disease, and improve rehabilitation and long-term care, rather than settings of care.

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The research reported in this monograph was commissioned by the HTA Programme as project number 96/39/18. The contractual start date was in January 1999. The draft report began editorial review in April 2004 and was accepted for publication in May 2005. As the funder, by devising a commissioning brief, the HTA Programme specified the research question and study design. The authors have been wholly responsible for all data collection, analysis and interpretation, and for writing up their work. The HTA editors and publisher have tried to ensure the accuracy of the authors’ report and would like to thank the referees for their constructive comments on the draft document. However, they do not accept liability for damages or losses arising from material published in this report.

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